


The Body Does Not Come Into It At All

by stella_bella



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Gen, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stella_bella/pseuds/stella_bella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys try to reconnect, despite all the years and the deaths and the other unsaid things that lie between them.  Takes place in Season 2, after "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" but before "Crossroad Blues".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem "The Detective" by Sylvia Plath.
> 
> This is a two-part story; chapter one is told from Dean's perspective, and chapter two from Sam's. As always, comments and constructive criticism are welcome.

Sam holds his brother’s heart, cradled in his own. Dean would never tell anyone that. In all honesty, he probably doesn’t even know it himself.

But it’s the actual, no-bullshit, stare-you-naked-in-the-face kind of truth, like all the other things they don’t talk about: Mom, Dad, Jess, Sam’s visions. You could fill a book with what’s Officially Off-Limits. Not good book, a book people would want to read, but a bastardized mish-mash of psych theories and overwrought telenovellas. Hell, Dean doesn’t even want to _think_ about it, and it’s his life.

Pretty sorry excuse for one.

Like right now. It’s late, or early, depending on whether you have a regular job and a normal life or not, and since they wouldn't know normal if it produced an ID, they’re in a cemetery, in the backwoods of Missouri, on a road so narrow that it doesn’t have a proper name, just numbers. The town’s so small it shouldn’t have a name, either. Or a ghost.

“Son of a _bitch_.”

Or so they thought.

Dean jams his shovel into the mounded earth, crumbly after weeks of no rain. The flashlight Sam’s holding paints a swooping line of light across the headstone and into the hole. He shifts, and the light drops a bit; Dean can see him pinching the bridge of his nose and grimacing, even though he’s just a shadow against the dark.

Dean sighs, put-upon as always.

“Why’s it always gotta be like this, man? Why can’t we ever have a nice, easy salt-and-burn?” Sam huffs a laugh in response, and it feels good that they can do this, that they can complain about something stupid for a change.

It also feels empty.

Dean's so fucking tired all he wants to do is lay down and sleep for a week, but he knows this is his job, not just digging up bodies but also playing at carefree.  He's the comedian, the one who cracks jokes and leers at teenage waitresses and puts muddy boots on the bed so Sam will roll his eyes and make that face he always makes and be distracted from what Dean isn't saying. It works, too. Sometimes Dean's a stone-cold genius.

“We must have missed something. All the eyewitnesses and the evidence pointed to a vengeful spirit." Sam's already two steps ahead.

Dean frowns, scratching at the dirt on his forearm. The flashlight arcs again, Sam gesturing helplessly, like maybe they just missed the body the first time around. Dean's still tired and now he's grumpy, and he hasn’t had a decent meal in two days. The light picks out the coffin, jagged splinters standing out in sharp relief where he bashed the lid in with his boot. He closes his eyes briefly, seeing two lanes of worn asphalt still. He opens them. Box’s still empty.

“Dammit.”

He turns towards Sam, jaw set. The light sweeps over him, blinding for a second.

“Dude. Watch it.”

Sam just sighs, almost inaudibly, and drops the beam a little. "We should go.  Fill in the grave, go back to the library.  Maybe we missed something; maybe it's not a ghost."  He gestures half-heartedly towards the empty coffin.

Dean allows a moment to indulge his god-given right as an older brother to be a pain in the ass.

“Really, Sam? I would say this is pretty damn conclusive. Trust Billy Bob Redneck over here not to know the difference between a ghost and a friggin’ reanimated corpse.” He scrubs a hand across his face before dropping it to his side. “What do you think, zombie or revenant?”

“I dunno. Revenant, I’d guess, just because it’s only one.” Sam sounds like he’s choosing the lesser of two evils.

“Yeah, so far.”

Sam grunts and runs a hair through his hair, lets his shoulders drop a little. He holds the flashlight out and takes the shovel from Dean.

“Here. Hold this. I’ll fill it in.”

Dean lets him, but only because he was nearly blinded earlier. And Sam can’t ever hold the flashlight steady; he’s too antsy, always pacing and gesturing and sometimes it feels like Dean’s digging up the floor of a disco. And he refused to bring back pie the last time they stopped at a gas station because he was still pissy and riled up from four straight hours of Metallica. Screw that. Dean’s biggest regret is that he failed to pass on his good taste in music to his little brother. Life without an epic soundtrack must be so boring.

“ _What_.”

Dean jerks, bobbing the light. It shines in Sam’s face and he throws an arm up in defense.

“Dude, that was an accident before.”

“Stop complaining. Are we done yet? I’m starving.”

“I’m almost done. Maybe it’d go a little faster if you were actually helping instead of standing there making faces.”

“Can’t help it. Not my fault you have no appreciation for the good things in life. It’s like you wanna suffer or something.”

There’s a beat of silence where Sam is trying to follow the railway pileup that is Dean’s train of thought.

“You are so weird, Dean.”

“Whatever, man. You know you like it. Now come on. I’m gonna turn into a zombie myself in about two minutes if I don’t get something to eat.”

Sam doesn’t even dignify that with a response. Unless you count the muffled snort as he picks himself up where he’d been leaning on the shovel and starts digging again, shaking his head.

Dean doesn’t notice.

~

It’s eight in the morning and Sam is so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that it makes Dean want to hit something. Maybe his brother’s smug face.

“Yeah, it’s definitely a revenant. Zombies have to be raised by someone, usually a witch or a demon. Revenants come back on their own.”

Dean grunts. He’s still not fully awake and the coffee is so bad he’s debating whether the promise of a caffeine buzz is worth the damage to his taste buds.

“Did you make this out of that cemetery dirt, Sam? Tastes like mud and dead people.” He takes a sip for show and makes a face.

Sam looks up from the laptop and his gaze could peel paint at a thousand paces.

“Dean, come on. We’ve gotta figure this out before someone else gets hurt.”

He shifts in the chair, goes back to the screen, squinting against the glare from the window. It’s funny, how easily he fit back into Dean’s life, how normal it feels to have him sitting there wearing frown lines into his forehead and jiggling his foot like he’s twelve again. Dean wonders what that says about _him_ , that he’d been living pretty much on his own for two years after he and dad finally got sick of each other and he still hadn’t broken the habit of glancing over at the passenger seat or leaving the light on after he left the bathroom at night or even asking for a double room (but in his defense it was that _one time_ and he was so wasted he was seeing three identical check-in clerks ). And yet, give him Sam back for one day, and look at what happened.

He decides it is way too early and he is way too sober to be thinking about crap like this, so he shakes his head to clear it and stretches, abandoning the coffee which has doubled in disgusting now that it’s cold, and feels vertebrae pop and crackle. Sure as hell not twenty anymore, and for a second he’s not sure how he feels about that. He heaves himself off the side of the bed and passes Sam on the way to the bathroom, not stopping but managing to get a solid head-smack in there anyways.

“ _Dean_.”

He yawns, scratching his stomach, and pees with the door open just to make a point. Smirks to himself when he pictures how grossed-out Sam is right now, which would usually prompt a couple of choice insults and a lecture about personal space and respect and other things that girls and sissies care about, but Sam apparently decides this is not the time to pick a fight over Rules Regarding Personal Hygiene When You’re Staying In A Room The Size Of A Closet And Your Brother Is Sitting Right Here. Instead he gets his revenge by raising his voice over the sound of running water and switching into boring-ass college professor mode, which Dean wishes he could blame on the rich-bitch West Coast snobbery at Stanford but which had in fact been part of Sam’s personality from the moment he first opened a research book. He was eight, Dean thinks. And the book was _A History of Latinate Exorcisms and Their Uses_ or something like that, and it was the first, but sadly not the last time Dean would wonder whether Sam was in fact a Winchester, or even human.

“Revenants are corpses reanimated after death. Typically they were pretty nasty people during their lifetime who made it a point to go around making enemies and generally causing trouble. Once they come back, they want revenge on anyone that crossed them.”

Dean sticks his head out of the bathroom, holding a toothbrush and dripping white foam down his chin.

“Sam, did you ever get laid out of anything but pity?”

Although, since he’s rabid with toothpaste, it comes out more like a gargle.

Sam doesn’t even look over his shoulder. It's safe to say he knows exactly what Dean looks like right now, since he’s been getting comments through toothpaste and shaving cream and Listerine for going on twenty years. Dean suddenly wonders if Sam thinks he’s stupid or childish or worse, if he even has enough left in him to care.

“Dean. Can you stop acting like you’re five and just listen?”

Dean pulls a face just on principle and goes back into the bathroom to spit, washing out his mouth and splashing water on his face. He does not meet his eyes in the mirror.

“Revenants walk after midnight. The rest of the time they sleep in their coffins.”

“Like vampires?”

Dean’s out of the bathroom and digging through his duffle for a cleanish shirt. He doesn’t even bother to disguise the disbelief in his voice.

“Yeah. Actually, it looks like that’s where a lot of the vampire lore started. People borrowing from even older folk stories like these - almost every civilization has some version of the ‘walking dead’ that dates back to prehistoric times. A couple even mention bloodsucking, though that seems to just be people getting the two confused. So far as I can find, there aren’t any reliable reports of revenants drinking blood.”

“Huh. Guess that’s our good news of the day. Does it say how we kill ‘em?” His words are muffled as he pulls a grey t-shirt over his head, then tugs a button-up over that.

“You dig up the body and decapitate it with a shovel. Then either remove the heart or sprinkle the corpse with holy water and bury it again.”

“I say we do both.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, I agree. Don’t wanna have to come back here to do it again, especially since we’re gonna need to desecrate a grave in broad daylight.”

“Aw, come on, man. There’s nothing but squirrels for ten miles in every direction around that cemetery. We could dig up every body and make a huge pyre and dance around it naked and probably no one would know.”

“Yeah, but we gotta be careful, okay? We can’t exactly walk around advertising what we’re doing, Dean. I know subtlety isn’t really your thing, but you are supposed to be dead. And a serial killer. All right?”

Something in Sam’s tone catches Dean as being slightly off. He looks up, and gets walloped by the naked worry he sees on Sam's face, warring with the usual exasperation. At least he thinks it’s worry. And that is so not cool. Sam should not be worrying about anything, least of all his royal fuck-up of a brother. Dean opens his mouth to make a smart remark - something about how nobody’ll notice he’s supposed to be dead when Sam is the one who’s nine feet tall - but can’t get the words out. Instead they kind of just stare at each other for a few seconds. Dean jerks his eyes away and clears his throat.

“Yeah, okay. Now come on, I want to get some corpse-free coffee.”

~

Sam won’t let Dean stop for breakfast at a diner; they make do with a mini mart that stocks fresh-baked pastries and hot coffee made with organic beans. Dean does a little happy dance over his steaming cup, and then deliberates in front of the counter, unable to choose between a thing with glaze and nuts and cinnamon and another thing with jelly and sugar sprinkles. He winks at the girl behind the counter, leans his elbows on the counter and drops his eyes slightly to read her nametag.

“So, tell me Kathleen, what’s good here?”

Sam rolls his eyes and wanders out to the car with his efficiently purchased breakfast. Boring and healthy and normal and so like Sam that Dean’s lip quirks a little, involuntarily. He watches Sam push open the door with his shoulder out of the corner of his eye, watches him lean against the Impala and take a sip of the coffee to mask his impatience. Realizes that the girl has answered him and he hasn’t heard a word she said.

“Sorry, sweetheart. What was that? I got a little distracted.”

He turns on the full-wattage smile, and she giggles and blushes, dropping her eyes and twirling the end of her braid around a manicured finger. She seems nice enough, soft curves and long brown hair, and she’s definitely buying the act, but unlike Sam frequently opines, he is actually observant enough to notice when a girl hasn’t graduated high school and he is in possession of an actual moral code. Well, maybe not an iron-clad one (there was that redhead in New Prairie - but to be fair he was about half-a-dozen shots past caring and _she_ kissed _him_ and that was just not his fault at all), but he’s not willing to shift it now. Not for this one. Not in this town. Her daddy probably keeps a shotgun loaded by the front door and would be on him before he got to second base. And besides, Sam is burning a hole in his spine from the parking lot like freaking Cyclops.

“Well, how about you give me what you recommend, and I’ll be sure to come back and let you know how much I liked it.”

It’s so easy it’s almost disappointing. Sometimes he makes it a point to tell ridiculous lies to these girls - Hollywood agent, fighter jet pilot, astronaut - just to see if anyone will call him out. Stand up, toss a drink, yell liar, bullshitter, fraud. Sometimes, when he’s plastered and maudlin, he thinks maybe all he wants is for someone to do exactly that, someone to tell him what he’s been telling himself for more than ten years.

Maybe Sam has a point about spewing feelings everywhere. It might be kind of cathartic. Or it might be dumb and stupid and he should stop thinking about it before he starts wearing eyeliner and those jeans that emasculate in a whole new way.

Kathleen frowns softly in concentration as she maneuvers the rainbow-sprinkled pastry out of its wax paper nest, and the look is so much like Sam’s when he’s sharpening knives or casting bullets that Dean does a quick double-take. He thinks inexplicable of Cassie, with her wild hair and infectious grin; her take-no-prisoners attitude, the way she could go from furious to laughing in the space of seconds, the face she’d make when she wanted something but didn’t want to have to beg for it. He squints and wonders if he’s finally cracking up, finally caving under the pressure of dad and the damn demon and the fucking weight of the world. Thinking of girls and Sam in the same moment - when it’s not _Sam needs to get laid_ or _I need to get Sam out of here so_  I  _can get laid_ \- is profoundly weird, even for him.

The difference between the girls and Sam is, of course, is that they buy his bullshit and Sam never does. Oh, he’ll pretend, let Dean think he’s gotten away with something, and then ambush him when his guard’s down. He’ll look over, with those sad puppy-dog eyes and sympathy oozing from his goddamn _pores_ and Dean will pray - the only time he ever does - for a lightning strike or a fire or an act of God, anything to keep the emo at bay. It never works.

Doesn’t mean he should stop trying.

Dean saunters out to the car, holding one of the treats in his teeth and trying to juggle the other one with a scalding coffee and his keys. Sam uncrosses his legs and pushes off the side of the car.

“You done playing creepy old man?”

“Chill out, dude. I was just being friendly.”

He leans past Sam, through the driver’s side window, and puts his breakfast in the car, is about to get in himself, but Sam hasn’t moved.

“Dean, your version of friendly makes people go for daddy’s shotgun.”

There’s an edge to his voice, barely noticeable. Dean stops and really looks at Sam, for the second time that day, which is just two times too many, thank you very much, and heralds the beginning of A Serious Talk. He’s about to say something - anything - to head this off right now, but then he realizes Sam’s got that tense, sort of hunched-over, defensive posture that means something is wrong but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Which is alarming because Sam always wants to talk about everything. All the time. So either this is apocalyptic bad news or - please god - it’s just something stupid that Dean did that’s nothing different than a thousand other times and should have been forgotten about approximately two seconds after it happened but Sam can’t ever let anything just freaking _go_. Despite the frustration it would entail, Dean’s really hoping it’s the latter. He can’t deal with major Sam angst right now. It’s taking everything he has to deal with his own.

“What’s going on with you, Sam? You’ve been a pissy bitch since last night.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?”

“No, Sam, I don’t. And I don’t appreciate being treated like I’m five, okay? You’re pissed at me, I get it. I don’t know why, but there you go. So if you could just keep the comments to yourself for two minutes, maybe we could finish this job.”

“And what then, Dean, huh? What then? Dad’s dead. He’s gone and there’s nothing – ” Sam swallows, the rest of his sentence lost.

“I know he’s dead, Sam. Doesn’t change anything. I was doing this on my own long before he went, okay? And I’m gonna keep doing it.”

“Why? Because he said so? Because he gave you an order?”

That is officially crossing the line. Dean can’t remember what a full night’s sleep feels like and he’s friggin’ exhausted from trying to keep his shit together, trying to stay alive and keep Sam alive; from trying to hold back the fear and the anger and the frustration that keep trying to bust out. He just wants to kill something right now, kill it and rip it apart and then just hole up and sleep until he forgets everything that’s happened over the past year and a half. Or, hell, the past twenty-seven and a half.

He pivots to face Sam, one hand on the top of the car, the other reaching out to Sam’s shoulder, keeping him at arm's length. It’s a warning.

“Sam. I do not want to do this right now. So either back off and get in the car, or you can walk back to the motel. I’m going to go kill a monster because it’s my job. Because it’s the right thing to do. You good with that?”

Sam is motionless, but Dean can feel the tremors running through the muscles under his hand, he can see the gritted teeth and the sharp unsteady breathing. There’s a second where he is honestly not sure if Sam is going to take a swing at him or not, and then Sam seems to win some interior battle, and he ducks his head and nods slightly, exhales and relaxes, just a little.

"Sam?"

“Yeah. Okay.”

“All right.”

Dean gets in carefully, watching Sam like he still might blow at any minute, and cranks the engine over, putting in a cassette tape of AC/DC’s early singles and turning up the volume so high that it borders on pain, even for him. He cannot deal with this right now.

The ride to the cemetery is a lot longer than it should be, and the tension building between them is almost corporeal. Dean has a feeling that this is not going to go away; it’s going to end with a fight – maybe even a physical one – and someone is going to walk out. It’s not a good feeling, especially since Sam is going to walk out, and Dean is going to be too proud to stop him. Just like last time.

They park in the same spot as last night, and silently pull all required tools out of the trunk. There’s a brief moment of wordless conflict when they both reach for the holy water at the same time; Dean hesitates but grabs the salt instead. Sam carries the holy water, lighter fluid, and a knife, and Dean takes the shovel with the salt. He pauses right before slamming the lid down and roots around until he finds a couple of brightly colored bandanas from Tequila Tuesday at Joe’s Bar four states away.  
  
“Here.”

Dean keeps his eyes fixed on the strip of shade visible under the car as he holds it out. Sam takes it without a word, silent acknowledgement of the fact that this guy’s been buried for only a couple weeks and it’s the middle of July.

They walk in silence to the grave, sunlight beating down on the grass and rising in heat waves to distort the trees on the far side. Cicadas buzz, and the sound carves a hole somewhere inside of Dean. He blinks as sweat runs into his eye, stinging, stealing a glance as Sam shifts the flask of holy water to his other hand and swipes at bangs already matted down. Dean looks away before Sam notices and a memory comes back so vivid he almost stumbles on the uneven ground.

It was a hot, endless summer like this, when Sam was still in grade school and before Dean discovered girls. They ended up squatting in an empty cabin by a lake in Montana for a couple weeks while their dad hunted some sort of demonic forest spirit in the surrounding wilderness. They spent their days eating Lucky Charms and leaving the sticky bowls on the counter, Sam smelling like sugar and sun when they wrestled in the untrimmed weeds out back. They raced each other down to the lake, whooping and hollering; they caught silverfish and waterbugs, hunted for frogs in the mossy creek. He remembers how Sam turned caramel brown and his own freckles multiplied in the sun; how Sam would lie next to him on the porch at night, chin propped on his arm, and trace them with fingers still pudgy with baby fat. They climbed a disused trellis up to the porch roof and sighted meteors in a sky so big and brilliant with stars that it expanded inside of Dean’s chest and filled a hole he hadn’t known was empty.

They played soccer and football and superheroes; Sam squealed like a girl when Dean dunked him in the water, merciless in his newfound height and lengthening bones. They kept fireflies in an old glass canning jar and Dean shredded a dead tree stump practicing his aim with knives while Sam perched on the tilting back steps, following the trajectory of the silver blade with an adult frown of concentration so out of place on his round-cheeked face. They shared clothes and Chef Boyardee, heated over a camping stove since the gas was disconnected; they shared whispers at night and band aids and bug bites, Dean always careful to dot each one of Sam’s with calamine lotion before bed.

He can still remember the weight of Sam’s body in his arms, the sharp poke of knees and elbows and shoulder blades, the warm, milky scent of him when he woke. He can remember lying on the crumbling shingles under a sky like a bowl, hot and uncomfortable but unwilling to move since Sam had fallen asleep on his chest and he could feel their hearts beating together.

Sam clears his throat and Dean snaps back to the present. He’s almost walked right past the grave.

He sticks the bandana in his back pocket and plunges the shovel into the dirt, feeling the sun on the exposed skin of his neck. The digging’s easy, dirt already loosened from the night before. It’s dry and crumbly, more like sand, and once again Dean sees the lake and the pine trees and Sam.

He stops and sheds his plaid shirt, sleeves already rolled up in the car on the way over. It’s friggin’ hot, and the sun is so bright that it bleaches everything else, even the primary colors of the bandana Sam’s holding loosely in his fist.

He digs and digs, and the silence is more oppressive than the heat. About halfway down, Sam makes an abbreviated move forwards, like he’s offering to take over, but Dean turns away and pretends he doesn’t see. He loses himself in the task, the comforting flex and burn of muscle, the trickles of sweat that collect and spread, staining his shirt dark. By the time he feels the _chunk_ when the shovel sinks into the split wood of the coffin, he’s filthy and his skin feels tender and tight. Gonna be sun burnt and stiff tomorrow. Not goddamn twenty anymore.

He pulls back, hands on his lower back and stretches, feeling things protest, and reaches for the bandana. Catches Sam staring at him with an unreadable look. Dean picks up the shovel again, shrugging off his unease, and starts scraping the dirt back and prying away pieces of the lid. Even with the bandana, the stench of rotting corpse is pretty overwhelming. He has to pause and close his eyes, concentrate on keeping his breakfast down. He hears Sam make a muffled noise of revulsion, bandana clapped against his mouth.

Dean stands up slowly, feeling his head spin with nausea and heat. The corpse is nothing new, just the latest in a long line of dead bodies, a bit bloated and discolored but still nothing more than a dead old man with gray hair and a cheap suit. Before he can even think, he hefts the shovel and brings it down with a grunt, severing right through muscle and spinal cord and into the wood underneath. The smell doubles, decomp gases rising in the air. Flies buzz around where there weren’t any before, and Dean swats one away from his neck. Suckers can smell death from a mile away. Worse than vultures.

He lays the shovel on the dirt outside the hole, and reaches up, wordless.

“Knife.”

There’s the briefest hesitation, and his eyes flick upwards too, against his will. Sam is crouching by the edge, with only his eyes visible over the sickly yellow of the bandana. He has dirt under his nails.

“Come on, Sam. This is gonna be nasty and I already need about four showers, so –”

Sam hands the knife over, fingers lingering just a bit too long on the handle, and Dean’s knuckles brush his as he takes it. Sam’s skin is hot, superheated in the sun, and his eyes are saying things that Dean doesn’t understand.

He cuts out the heart, or what’s left of it after formaldehyde and bacteria and bugs have worked their magic, and while he’s been covered with ectoplasm, and chupacabra guts, and fucking green slime from some cthulu wanna-be in a swamp in Florida, this one wins the car and the vacation and the dinette set.

Once he’s got the heart out, Sam unscrews the cap from the holy water and douses the thing. It sizzles and shrivels and blackens until it’s the size of a peach pit. Dean climbs out of the grave, teetering for a second, unsteady from dehydration and anxiety. Sam stands too, clenching his fingers in his jeans, and pours the rest of the flask over the body, watching it do the same. It looks about the size of a puppet when he’s done, or a small child.

They scatter salt and lighter fluid; watch the whole thing go up in an oily cloud of black smoke. Never like to take chances with stuff like this. You take chances and people get hurt. Sometimes they die.

They fill in the grave, Sam disappearing and showing back up with the second shovel.  They work in a suffocating silence that makes Dean squirm worse than the sunburn and the sweat and the stink of cooked corpse. The relief he feels when he’s tamped the last of the dirt down and they gather their stuff to head back to the car is almost painful, and he's grateful Sam walks slightly ahead of him.  
  
The Impala is a gateway to hell. She radiates heat so intense it repels them when they get close.

Dean yanks his plaid shirt out from where he’d stuffed it in his back pocket, swipes at the sweat and grave grime on his neck and arms, then uses it like an oven mitt to open the trunk and the driver’s side door. Sam does the same on his side. They get into the car, close the doors in tandem. Dean starts the engine and drives too fast over rutted dirt paths, trying to get a breeze. They haven’t said a word since breakfast.

The cassette player clicks over and AC/DC kick on, screaming about backseat rhythm, and Dean jumps, scrambling to turn it down. The ride back to the motel is quiet.

Dean takes first shower; Sam drops his overshirt on the scarred table and stretches, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m gonna grab a soda. Want anything?”

It feels like an olive branch, however temporary. Dean stops just outside the bathroom door, aware of Sam’s gaze between his shoulder blades. He touches the knob, then stops.

“Yeah, thanks.”

Sam doesn’t leave until he’s closed the door.

The shower is old and mildewy, and the spray is fitful. It feels like little needles on his sunburn, but it’s cold and wet and that’s all that matters. Dean closes his eyes against the throb of a headache and tries desperately not to think about anything.

Sam comes back and he’s sprawled on top of the bedspread, barefoot in jeans and a black t-shirt. He hears the door open and shut, the scrape of the chain bolt, but doesn’t lift his head from the pillow. He’s finally cool and doesn’t smell and the physical exertion has expanded and left him boneless and mellow; there’s no space for a fight.

Sam hovers at the foot of his bed; he can feel the indecision from all the way across the room.

“Sam. I can hear you thinking. Stop it.” His words are muffled in the scratchy pillowcase; he doesn’t even open his eyes.

“Dean.”

He sits up, abruptly, vision darkening just a bit around the edges as all his blood rushes to ground. The last time Sam sounded like that, he was staring at their father’s body on a hospital bed, covered in a white sheet.  
  
He’s moving quickly, reaching out as Sam caves in on himself, sodas forgotten on the table.

“Sam, hey, Sam. It’s okay, man, it’s okay.”

Sam shakes his head, wordless; if he talks, he’ll cry. His face is a knot of anguish and his hands are fists in his armpits. Dean reaches out and touches Sam’s shoulder lightly, like he’s asking for permission. He thinks that they never used to be so tentative around each other; he doesn’t know what to do anymore. He doesn’t know Sam anymore.

Sam drops into the touch, and Dean can’t get his balance in time. They fall back onto the bed, Dean trying his damnedest to keep either of them from knocking into the floor or each other. Sam ends up next to him, curled into his shoulder like he used to when he was little.

“Sam, Sammy, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”  
  
He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore, his brain is disconnected and automatically reverting to Big Brother Reassurance Mode. He thinks Sam is crying, can hear choked sniffles and feel the shaking that comes from trying to hold back sobs, but right now all he cares about is that Sam is not talking about Leaving Dean or Hating Dean or Never Wanting To See Dean Again. In fact, he’s not talking at all, and Dean would let Sam snot all over him every day if that could be a regular thing.

Okay, maybe once a week.

He wraps his arms around Sam a bit awkwardly – after all, they haven’t done this in almost a dozen years, and Sam is probably about two feet taller than he used to be and now he weighs more than Dean. But it’s okay, it’s okay because it’s Sam, and Sam matters more to Dean than concerns about stupid things like comfort and personal space. Dean shifts, thumb rubbing over the sharp edge of a shoulder blade, relearning the lines and boundaries of a body he used to know as well as his own.

They just sit – or Dean sits, with Sam curled half in his lap, until the light fades to a soft golden glow that seems to come from everywhere and the sodas are warm, sitting in rings of damp. Sam’s sobs ebb, until he’s breathing shallow but regular and his hands are no longer trying to claw through Dean’s shirt.

Dean shifts, just a little. He can hear Sam’s heartbeat through their shirts, and he remembers.

“Sammy. Uh, I know you’re having a Moment, or whatever, but I’m frickin’ starving.”

Sam shifts and hiccups slightly, rubs the point of his chin against Dean’s shoulder as he chuckles.  
  
“Yeah, me too.”

“Come on, get cleaned up and we’ll grab dinner.”

Sam staggers to his feet, circulation obviously trying to catch up, and weaves his way to the bathroom. He pauses at the door, and turns around, still looking hard at the floor.

“Uh, thanks, man.”

“Sam. Food. Now.”  
  
He snorts and slips inside, but not before Dean catches the relief in his down-turned face that this is not going to be made into A Big Deal. Of course, it will be made into teasing fodder for the next several years at least, but that’s okay. They’re okay.

~

Dinner is what it always is - diner food in a cracked vinyl booth under buzzing fluorescent bulbs. Sam has a grilled chicken salad, and Dean has a cheeseburger with extra bacon and fries, and isn’t that just the story of their lives? Sam trying to take care of his body like he’s got a future, trusting the chef to have washed the lettuce, to have not left the dressing out all day breeding germs; Dean getting what he wants because life’s too damn short to worry about arteries and heart valves, choosing something that’s standard and really hard to fuck up, even in a shabby diner in the middle of Nowheresville, USA.

Dean eats with gusto, licking bacon grease off his fingers and flirting with the waitress, even though she’s tired and begrudging with a smile, coming up on the end of her shift and looking at the wrong side of forty. Sam picks at his food, drawing designs in the dressing with his fork tines. He’s got bags under his eyes and tension around his mouth; Dean thinks with abrupt clarity that he looks fifty and fifteen at the same time.

“You gonna eat that, or what?”

Sam says nothing, just breathes a sigh that Dean’s sure he’s not aware of.

“Come on, dude. We haven’t eaten all day and we’re gonna be in the car first thing tomorrow. This is your last chance to get non-packaged food for, like, the foreseeable future.”

“So this is my last supper?”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

Dean’s voice is sharper than he intends, maybe, and Sam looks up. Looks startled. He gets that frown that means he’s trying to read between Dean’s words, trying to burrow into his head. Dean hates that look.

“You ever hear of jokes, Dean? Why’re you so touchy all of a sudden?”

Dean shakes his head and leans back, not looking at Sam. His burger sits abandoned on a drift of cold fries.

“Nothing; just tired. Forget it.”

He’s staring at the glass display case on the counter, mostly empty but for crumbs and tissue paper, holding a few lopsided crullers and one oversized oatmeal cookie, but he’s not seeing it or the waitress behind it, picking at her cuticles and worrying the corner of her mouth with her teeth. He’s seeing through it, to the memory it sparks unwilling.

Eating alone at a diner counter at ten o’clock, mainlining coffee from a chipped mug and pretending he’s not staring at the cell phone next to his elbow. Waiting for the call that never comes.

Walking back to the motel on streets damp with rain, the cold breeze heralding more on the way. Opening the door to the latest motel room, having to shove it with his shoulder because it’s swollen with the moisture in the air. Holding his breath as he walks in and turns on the light, even though he knows dad’s not going to be there, the absence of his truck striking as he turned into the lot.

Easing out of his jacket, turning on the bedside lamp and the television, desperate for distraction from thoughts that run darker than any nightmare. Showering and dressing in cleanish clothes, automatically starting to pack the bags for an early start tomorrow. The clothes go in, balled and twisted; the guns do not. Dad would kill him if he ever displayed anything but reverence for the tools of the trade, the things that keep them alive. Not that he needs the reminder.

Watching some lame late-night movie - it’s black and white and absurdly formal; the women flutter their eyelashes and smile mysteriously; the men wear suits and smoke cigars and don’t carry guns.

Passing out from sheer exhaustion, the caffeine powerless against two days of no sleep following hard on the heels of a week with barely any. Dad’s been a maniac on this hunt, chasing a witch who kidnapped children and drained them dry, using their blood to fuel her power. They had finally caught up to her that night, and of course she refused to die easy - because even evil fears the other side - and it took twenty minutes of fighting and getting thrown into walls before they were able to trap her and kill her, burn the altar and her black books.

They didn’t find the bodies until they searched the basement. Six of them, small and fragile, pale underneath the dirt smudges and the dried blood. So small, so helpless against the dark and the evil things it hid. Dean hadn’t said a word, just pressed his lips tighter. He saw his dad reach out, touch one boy lightly on the hair, almost like a caress - _Sleep now, son_ \- before he turned abruptly and squealed the tires as he drove off, leaving Dean to salt and burn the witch, to bury her ashes and the altar, to purge the abandoned cabin of all her detritus and then to find a payphone for the anonymous 911 call, sending the children home.

He hasn’t seen Dad since, though he has a fairly good idea of where he’d gone - there was a bar downtown that looked dim and gritty enough to get lost in for a few hours. If he were on his own, Dean would’ve skipped dinner and headed straight there, drowning the memory of those still white faces with shots of whiskey and purging his guilt with a willing warm body, preferably in a short skirt. But he’s still got someone to look after, and maybe if he pretends it’s still the same, if he focuses all his energy on pulling dad out of bars, washing him up, feeding him Advil and flat ginger ale, letting him sleep it off in the latest motel bed with the curtains pulled tight against the day; maybe if he keeps dad from self-destructing, he won’t have time to think about how much he wants to join him.

“Dean?”

Sam is looking at him funny, head cocked and eyes narrowed. Dean has the uncomfortable feeling that Sam knows exactly what he was thinking about.

“You with me?”

“I’m right here, Sam. Just tired. Digging up a grave twice in a day will do that to you.”

The words lack any sort of honesty, even to Dean’s ears. Sam nods, but doesn’t buy it. The rest of the meal is silent.

~

The motel room is still warm and slightly stuffy even after sundown. The air’s cooling off outside, the sky streaked with high level cirrus clouds stained pink and purple in the afterglow. A front is moving in, pushing back the heat.

Dean flips on the television, collapses onto the bed, and immediately starts frowning at the limited selection. Sam peeks at the screen when he crosses the room; it seems to be a choice between infomercials, reruns of some 90s sitcom, and a local low-budget news show.

Dean is not impressed.

“Why can’t we ever stay somewhere that gets decent television? I swear half my life’s been spent flipping channels. How many reruns of _Friends_ do you think we’ve seen, huh? I feel like we should win an award or something.”

Sam doesn’t answer; it’s clearly taking all of his energy to stay upright.

“Sam? You still alive? Can’t conk out on me now, man. We didn't even have to fight anything today.”

Sam grunts and forces his eyes open. It looks like he’s the one who had to cut out a decomposing heart on top of dealing with emotional vomit. In fact, it’s almost enough to get Dean a little pissed. Almost. Instead he just sighs and feels the irritation drain away, replaced with resignation and concern. He is a big brother. It’s what he does.

“Sam. Go to bed.”

Surprisingly, he does, with a minimum of fuss, even. Dean keeps his eyes on the small screen, barely noticing when _M*A*S*H_ replaces _Friends_. He only looks away when he hears Sam breathing, deep and even into the pillow.

Sam’s got his head burrowed into the pillowcase, his hands clutching at the sheets. He used to sleep the same way before he left, before he sprouted massive hands and feet and the rest of his body trying to catch up. It’s amazing, Dean thinks, that he sleeps the same way he did then, the same strange combination of sprawling and clutching that makes him look like little Sammy again. Dean wonders, for a minute, that this should remain when so much else has been taken away.

He doesn’t go to bed until his brain is so anesthetized from television and exhaustion that he knows it will surrender to sleep before it can torment him with doubts and what-ifs and am-I-doing-the-right-things.

It mostly works.

~

They’re on the road by eight, Dean conceding to the early hour with _Led Zeppelin I_ at a reasonable level. Sam is quiet; barely said a word as they got packed. Dean’s not sure if this is morning-after calm or eye-of-the-storm calm. It would be frustrating except it’s Sam, and so it’s expected.

Sam shifts in the seat; Dean deliberately not looking over at him.

“I miss him too, you know.”

Dean grunts. Maybe Sam’s been hearing all the things he wasn’t saying after all.

“I know you don’t want to talk about him, I know you blame yourself. But you shouldn’t.”

Dean huffs a not-laugh. He doesn’t know why. It’s not even on the same planet as funny.

“It’s not your fault, Dean. It wasn’t your fault I left, and it’s not your fault that Dad - you know.”

He clears his throat, a staccato exhale.

“You gotta stop blaming yourself, man. It’s not fair.”

“Sam.”

Sam goes on like he didn’t hear the pleading in Dean's voice, his unspoken  _for the love of god Sam just shut up now before it gets all emotional and shit and I have to turn in my Man Card and start wearing fucking pantyhose._  This is expected, too. Not welcome though.

“I can’t - I didn’t -”

Inhale. Exhale.

“You’re my only family, Dean. You’re all I’ve got left. Please don’t do this, okay?”

Dean doesn’t answer; he can’t. At least not in words. But he turns up the music and he maybe nods a little, and his step is lighter, his grin more genuine when they stop for dinner. And he steals French fries from Sam’s plate and chews with his mouth open, and laughs with his whole body when Sam makes a crack about the couple in the booth across from them and it almost doesn’t feel like it requires effort.

And it’s not fixed or better or even okay. But that’s standard operating procedure for a Winchester. Dean thinks that if his life ever started to make sense or stopped reading like an edition of _Ripley’s Believe It Or Not_ , he’d probably try to exorcise it. As long as Sam is okay - or at least thinks Dean is - Dean can screw up and fail and drink too much and keep running away, and it won’t hurt like it used to.

Of course, what he doesn’t get, is that it goes both ways.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean holds his brother’s heart, cradled in his own. And Sam gave up the denial years ago; he wears it in his eyes now, on his sleeve like a goddamned medal, but it doesn’t matter since Dean doesn’t want to see.

Sam is so sick of it.

But then he’s sick of a lot of things, like this hunt.

Arthur Granville said it was a ghost.

“Near knocked me flat two nights ago and up and vanished. I never had no grudge with Joe, but I guess he feels different. Come at me with an axe. My axe. Borrowed it last year fer wood splittin’ and jest kep’ it.” He’d frowned pensively, scratching at the drying sweat under his cap.

“Jest like ‘im too, always lookin’ fer a favor but never handin’ ’em out.” He’d spat tobacco juice into the dirt next to his porch, like a punctuation mark.

Arthur was sixty if he was a day, a dried-out tanned husk in overalls who looked like he’d been grown on his own land. Joe was his neighbor, or had been, until he kicked the bucket a few weeks back. Apparently he wasn’t missed. The town was full of people who had no compunctions about speaking ill of the dead; the mailman who liked to talk big after a few cold ones in the local bar about shooting Joe's vicious mutt stuck out, as did the powdered and preserved Ms. Hawley, who'd gone down in local legend after she'd tried to kill him way back when for something no one could remember anymore.

Sam thinks that small-town America has an undeserved reputation for friendly folk and homey, church-picnic socializing when in reality, all the nasty stuff they hunt settles there disproportionately, drawn to white picket fences and hypocrisy, to places where everyone knows everyone else’s business and passes judgment like the second coming. He doesn’t know if it’s ironic or symbolic, but it is depressing: just another thing that isn’t what it seems, that tries to hide its darkness with an insincere smile.

“Dammit.”

Dean is scowling at the exhumed grave, looking like he’s winding up to take a swing at the next thing he sees, monster or not. He gripes about it never being easy, about them always getting the shitty jobs, and Sam has to bite his tongue once again, keep himself from reminding Dean that all the jobs are shitty. He rubs the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on, though whether it’s from lack of sleep or frustration or just Dean, he doesn’t know.

“We should go back to the library, check the stories again. Obviously we missed something.”

“Glad to know that college education’s good for something, Sammy. Best guess, zombie or revenant. Which one, do you think?”

Sam ignores the sarcasm and frowns, considers the old facts in a new light.

“Revenant, I’d say, just because there’s only one.”

“Yeah, so far.”

Dean’s tone is resignedly pessimistic, and Sam realizes he’s forgotten how this job worried at you, chipped away at the edges, until you walked around expecting the worst at every turn and bracing for blows that never came.

He looks at Dean, glowing white in the flashlight beam, and suddenly sees things he doesn’t like: dark shadows under his eyes, skin drawn tight and pale over cheekbones, a slump in his shoulders that reads more like emotional exhaustion than physical. Dean looks old.

“Hey, dude! Watch the eyes!”

Sam jumps, drops the beam and apologizes. He offers to fill in the grave, feeling absurdly like a sinner doing penance. _Bless me, father for I have sinned; it has been twenty-three years since my last confession._

Mostly he digs so he doesn’t have to look at Dean, see him hold himself together with a thread of will and a tired joke. He loses himself in the familiar movement and deliberately ignores the part of his brain that raises an eyebrow at the fact that "familiar" and "grave desecration" are part of the same thought.

He thinks he’s been tired for months.

~

The drive back to the motel is silent, except for some radio station fading in and out, mellow country twang interrupted by static. Sam watches his reflection in the window because there’s nothing else to look at, and he thinks how strange it is that he doesn’t recognize himself. He’s not Sammy, hasn’t been since the day his acceptance letter came, and he doesn’t know who Sam is anymore. He’s not a pre-law student or Jessica’s boyfriend, but he’s not a hunter yet - again? - either. He’s not John Winchester’s son, he never wanted to be before he left and even if that changed, now that John’s dead it doesn’t matter anyway.

“You okay, Sam?”

The question is quiet, quiet enough that he could pretend he didn’t hear it if he wants. It’s how Dean operates, plausible deniability all the way. Sam briefly considers ignoring it; he thinks that he’d be having an existential crisis right about now if he wasn’t so damn tired, but it’s Dean and he knows exactly what kind of effort a question like that cost.

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

He feels like he says that far too much, feels like he’s told a lie even though it is true - maybe not the whole truth, but a decent-sized chunk of it.

Dean just nods, switches hands on the steering wheel and flexes his right, working out stiffness in the fingers from gripping a shovel. Sam stretches his own fingers in sympathy, almost without thinking. This is not a glamorous job, not by any stretch, but sometimes he can pretend in that moment when they’re lighting a book of matches over a desecrated corpse like a hero on the battlefield. This is not one of those times. Nor are all the other times, when he wakes up on the tail end of a nightmare haloed in flame, or when the bruises darken badly enough to make public places uncomfortable.

“You’re awful quiet, dude. I don’t think you’ve said more than two sentences all night. It’s kinda weirding me out.” Dean looks over quickly before turning his eyes back to the road.

He’s pushing, and this is unusual. Sam doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know if this is a cause for celebration, Dean finally growing out of his macho-man, strong-but-silent shit, or if this is one of the signs of the apocalypse and he should upgrade his Alert System to Defcon-3. That’s the problem with Dean - he says what he thinks but only in regards to women, booze, and the job. The really important stuff, the life-changing doubts and the guilt, vanish into some black hole in his brain, from which nothing escapes but attitude and alcoholism.

Sam realises he’s been quiet for a few minutes too long. Dean reaches over and turns up the radio, soft hissing underlying some artistic banjo fiddling. He sets his jaw and stares straight ahead, and Sam knows it’s too late.

Lately it feels like everything he does is too late. Like in those panicked dreams where you take a test you’re not prepared for, given in a language you don’t speak.

~

The motel room is utilitarian and dingy. It also feels about ten sizes too small.

Sam’s definitely grown since the last time he was sharing a car and a room and a diner seat with his brother. He’s taller, broader, and his mouth is smarter without dad there to temper it with a glare and a command. He feels awkward, like he’s hit a growth spurt like the one when he was fifteen, the one that left his wrists and ankles knobby and vulnerable, except now it feels like his mind is what’s exposed.

Dad used to take up all of the space in a room, fill it with his scent of gunpowder and Old Spice, his ramrod back and an aura of unchallenged command so strong sometimes it felt like another person, lying beside them in the dark. But now that he’s gone, Sam realizes exactly how small he was - not a Goliath after all, just a David, hiding his fear and loss with stubbornness and defiance, wielded like a weapon.

There’s no extra space in the room, no extra air to breathe. Sam can’t tell if that’s because Dean’s expanded to fill the space where John used to be, or if he has. Or if neither of them has changed at all, just realized how they never needed John in the first place, that they were capable without him.

Dean collapses onto the bed closest to the window, reviving himself after a few minutes to dig through the greasy pizza box from last night. He chews methodically but without any enjoyment. There’s enough for Sam too, but the sight of congealed cheese and room-temperature sauce sets his stomach on edge, so he skips dinner. Just another way he’s different, another way he’s not Sammy - the kid who’d eat a whole pizza by himself and still feel empty, the kid who grew so fast that he could feel it like a physical shift inside; plates realigning and expanding. Some nights he swore he could hear the crack of bones stretching, even over dad’s snores.

He goes to bed early, curled on his side away from the door, away from Dean’s bed where his brother is perched, gnawing on red twizzlers from god knows where and watching some lame reruns with the sound down low.

He doesn’t say a word to Dean, and right before he falls asleep, it feels like déjà vu - a random motel room in another state, in another decade, Dean his reluctant babysitter, more interested in getting pay-per-view porn without the pay on the dusty tv set than in helping Sam with his homework or his worries about dad and whether or not they’ll still be in town in a week so he can go on the field trip to the zoo. For a moment, he’s twelve and angry at the whole world and dying to get away.

In that last, drifting bit of consciousness, a voice wonders, _what was the point of leaving if you were just going to end up right where you started_. He doesn’t have an answer.

~

The morning is bright and uncomfortably warm; it’s going to be a lovely day for digging up rotting flesh. Sam wonders, a bit savagely, if they should just let the stupid revenant or whatever keep doing its thing, killing off uneducated, prejudiced hicks several dozen years past their expiration dates. Might remind the universe, or God, or Whomever, that these are the people who are supposed to be dying.

He stumbles out the door, pulling on a shirt as he goes, in search of coffee. Dean won’t wake up for anything less than twelve ounces of hot fresh caffeine, though sometimes he has to make do with just the caffeine part. Like today - the free coffee is lukewarm and manages to be both burnt and watery, which Sam thinks must require some bending of the laws of culinary physics. Maybe the Nobel Prize committee should get on this.

He takes a sip and makes a face. Even laced with cream and sugar, and drunk quickly, it smells like the cemetery they were digging in last night.

Seize the day, my ass.

He returns to their room, bearing a cup as a peace offering, knowing it won’t do much other than to keep Dean from escalating from Irritable to Antagonistic.

Sam thinks, not for the first time, that his life sucks.

~

Breakfast is quick - no comfortable hum and clatter of diner traffic, no thick white plates with eggs and bacon and toast arranged like a blessing, the sprig of parsley the closest they’ve ever come to a personal touch, a home-cooked meal.

Sam grabs a coffee and bagel, leaves Dean behind to flirt with the teenaged cashier.

He leans on the car, warm metal bleeding through his shirt, and thinks, Story of my life.

He sticks his bagel on the roof as a sort of passive-aggressive revenge; he can hear Dean even now, _Sam if you fuck up that paint job I will fuck you up_ , and blows on his coffee to cool it. The cicadas are loud already. His brother’s still inside, leaning on the counter and turning on the charm, and Sam never understood why girls were so drawn to his cocky, devil-may-care attitude, but then he never understood his brother’s need to act that way either.  
  
When Dean is just Dean, not the seducing, womanizing, in-your-face whirlwind of attitude and snark, channeling latent Clint Eastwood tendencies that Sam blames on dad’s Marine bullshit and twenty-three years’ worth of crappy late-night spaghetti westerns, when he’s just sitting on the Impala, or cleaning guns with that little furrow between his eyebrows, or driving and lost in thought, tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel, or grinning like the goddamned sun and covered in grime and sweat from the latest successful salt-and-burn – that’s when he’s most attractive. Not trying to be anything, just being.

That’s a side of him that girls never get to see, that not even dad got to see, and it makes Sam absurdly pleased, a fluttering low warmth, that this is something only for him. Dean lives hard and fast, trades bits of himself around, so many little pieces, so many people who take so much from him, the girls and the cops and the monsters, the victims and the survivors and the dead. Sam feels sometimes that there isn’t any left over for him, that he’s the most important person in Dean’s life but he gets the leavings – a smile here, a bad joke there. It’s nice – more than nice, actually – to know that he has this at least. This is something only for him.  
  
Sam is belatedly aware of the car’s warmth soaking through his shirts, and he realizes Dean’s been inside for going on ten minutes. Ass. He’ll never get anywhere with that girl, not in this town, and they still have a body to burn.

When he does come out, he looks like a five-year-old who convinced grandma to give him two cookies instead of one. Sam doesn’t know whether to roll his eyes or laugh, and Dean’s smirk as he chews reminds him of so many times before.

Like that one time - Dean swiping powdered donuts from a convenience store three blocks from their current motel, slipping back inside as Sam was waking up, groggy and stiff and blinking the crusty bits out of his eyes.

His grin as he held out the crumpled box like it was the Gift of the Magi, sprinkle of white on his green t-shirt, glee evident in his voice as he said, “Rise and shine, Sammy! Breakfast of champions!”

How his face fell when Sam shoved past him without a word, locking himself in the bathroom and fighting down the anger that rose, sudden and choking. So fast it scared him, so fast he had to grip the edges of the stained sink and count his breaths. When it retreated - not gone, just shoved behind a wall of self-control - he met his eyes in the mirror and thought, _Two more years, two more years and I’m out._

He heard the door open and close, not a slam but with a definite finality to it, and when he cautiously unlatched the bathroom door, he found the room empty of Dean. The box of donuts was on the single table, half-open and mostly full, and the fury melted into an ache so quickly Sam barely noticed the transition.

Dad had been gone for over a week hunting a chupacabra, the identification of which had made Dean perk up and grin at Sam like raw electricity. His smile two hours later didn’t even deserve the name, a weak but valiant reassurance meant for Sam and not himself, after Dad ordered him to stay behind, no reason given. He’d ruffled Sam’s hair and promised a kung fu movie marathon and no research allowed, even making it sound like the forced benching was his idea.

Dean hollers a greeting, startling Sam out of the memory.

Sam clears his throat and shifts, teeth worrying his lip as he studies his shadow on the pavement without really seeing it, bagel forgotten behind his shoulder. The memory of Dad leaving them, always leaving and never coming back, and Dean trying so hard to hold the edges of their little world together, trying so hard but they slipped away anyway, him and dad. This was the story of Sam’s life - Dad gone and Dean aching to follow and keep his eye on Sam at the same time. Having to choose his dad or his brother, and trying so hard to pick both but failing. Disappointing Dad and pushing Sam away. Dad walking out on him after years of cutting comments; Sam pushing back until he slipped right through the cracks in Dean’s grin.

His voice is not his own when he stops Dean from getting in the car. He’s angry at Dad and Dean and himself, angry at the world and a god that he no longer believes in, whom he prayed to for years and years, starting when he was barely old enough to string the letters in "omnipotent" together, let alone pronounce it correctly. That lasted through years and years and dozens of states and thousands of miles; motel rooms and apartments and chalk-scented classrooms; through days of nothing but worry and empty stomachs, nights spent by hospital beds and huddled in graveyards; through fights and punches and Stanford; the absence of Mary and Jess’s death, Dean’s almost-death, the promise of something unholy stirring in his veins.

It weathered everything except for this, the mother of all catch-22s: father or brother,  _No sir, not everything_ , and now he finally knows how Dean felt all those years ago and suddenly he hates him for that.  Big brothers are supposed to protect you, keep you from their mistakes.

The words fly, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying, why he’s picking this fight, except that he needs to.

“Dad’s dead, he’s gone and he’s never coming back--”

The words feel so meaningless because he doesn’t have the right ones; four years of college and twenty-three in the school of hard knocks and never one lesson in grief.

Dean’s voice is like something he never wants to hear again, cold and hard and distanced, and Sam can feel the walls going up.

He barely keeps himself from punching his brother in the face, though it’s not so much that he wants to hurt Dean so much as he wants to hurt himself by lashing out at him. If he can drive Dean away, cut out his own heart and watch it shrivel by the side of a highway, abandoned in the dust and fading traces of exhaust, then maybe he can make amends for all of the times he was the one leaving, the slow build-up of smaller, sharper wounds he left in his wake.

The drive to the cemetery is silent, but weighted with all of the things they are not saying. Sam thinks his head might explode from the deafening guitars on whatever crap music Dean is playing in his not-so-passive-aggressive game, and he wonders if this is it, if this is the end of them, Sam and Dean and the family business.

Dad is still driving them apart. He’s been dead six months and he still sits between them and stops them from saying what they want, still makes them choose.

~

The cemetery is hot and dry and too quiet.

Dean divvies up the supplies from the trunk, like when he and Sam were still in single digits and shared the second-hand green plastic army men from the Goodwill in Tuscaloosa - Dean in the backseat, sitting sideways and hunched over the hinged metal box, “Look, ten for you and ten for me, so stop whining already.” And then they’d all end up on Sam’s side of the car anyway, stuck in the space between the seat and the door, wedged in the ashtray and kicked under the driver’s seat in front.

He almost screws it up, reaches for the holy water at the same time as Dean, feels a single suspended moment where nothing moves, but then Dean gives in, moves away, a gesture so practiced it’s almost unnoticeable.

He watches Dean dig, watches him decapitate a corpse like it’s another day at the office, and sees the Dean he used to know, a quick glimpse like a double-exposure.

It was a summer almost a lifetime ago, somewhere in the wilderness out West, when dad dropped them off at an empty cabin with a duffle full of non-perishables and a stern “Look out for your brother, Dean.”

He was gone for nearly two weeks and it was heaven.

No drills, or PT, or lessons on how to melt silver using only a camping stove and spoons and a bullet mold. Just him and Dean and the summer sun, endless fields of warm prickly grass and a lake so clear that it was another extension of the sky. He remembers laying on the sagging roof, feeling the pleasant warm ache of tired leg muscles, listening to Dean name the constellations, feeling the warmth of his chest under his hand.

He remembers how they caught bugs, captured frogs in the narrow creek and studied them solemnly, at least until Dean let them go and then tried to wipe the slime on Sam’s face. He remembers noticing with a shock that Dean was getting taller, the angle of cheekbone and jaw pushing through the roundness of his face, another way that he was leaving Sam behind. He remembers the mosquitoes, thick like the dark that came sudden and unrelieved by any streetlights; the itch of bites and the smell of calamine lotion. He remembers knowing, even then, that this was something he should savor because it wasn’t going to last.

It was raining when they left, a steady silver downpour that made everything smell of damp and rot, that made him want to curl up in the musty green army blankets on the porch and play cards and listen to Dean tell his crazy stories and watch him valiantly practice his poker face. The rain was warm, and he stuck his tongue out to catch the drops before dad yelled at him to get a move on. He watched the cabin get smaller and smaller behind them, fading grayly into the trees and the rain like it never existed as Dean chattered away in the front seat, asking dad questions about the evil whatever-it-was that he’d been hunting.

Most of all, he remembered being a kid, having fun with his brother.

“Knife.”

Dean’s voice is startling, mostly because he isn’t the Dean in Sam’s memories, twelve and carefree. He’s twenty-seven and his eyes are dark in the summer sunlight.

“Sam. This is gonna be really nasty and I need about four showers anyway, so--” Dean sounds irritated and also slightly nervous.

Sam hands the knife over, a thousand things running through his head but not enough courage to say any of them. Dean’s skin is warm in the sun, dirt obscuring the freckles on his knuckles.

The sun is too hot, and he feels shaky as he stands, watching the corpse wither under the spatters of blessed water, turn black and crumbly and small. He stands shoulder to shoulder with Dean like always, even though they’re passive aggressively Not Talking, and watches the body burn into nothing. It feels exposed in the sunlight, less dramatic and more sad. He’s glad when the last of the dirt is tamped down and he can turn away.

~  
That sunlight is easing into a warm afternoon glow by the time they get back to the motel. Sam hesitates by the door, feeling big and useless and unsure of where to put his hands. Dean is already heading for the bathroom, first shower claimed without any words.

Sam wants to apologize, wants to say, You dumbass, I didn’t mean the things I said, I’m just pissed and heart-broken and I know you are too so can we just stop pretending and talk about this before it rips us apart, and he’s gearing up to say it, but then he clears his throat and what comes out is

“I’m getting a soda from the machine. Want anything?”

He’s inwardly berating himself for being such a punk-ass wienie when Dean stops, one hand on the doorknob. He’s got a smear of dirt on the back of his neck.

“Sure.”

His voice is rusty from disuse, and Sam feels that like a condemnation, like he fucked up so badly that Dean’s scared to talk to him. Dean slips into the bathroom and shuts the door softly, and only then does Sam turn around and find his way to the ancient Coca-Cola machine by the office.

He listens to the coins rattle, the thump of the cans hitting the bottom, and is reaching down automatically to grab them when he hears a woman.

She’s standing in the doorway of the room a few doors down from theirs, a shortish thin bottle-blonde with pink toenails. Her voice is hoarse from an obvious pack-a-day cigarette habit, maybe booze too; she looks the type. Trailer trash.

“Jimmy, please. Please, I’m begging you.”

Sam glances in the direction of her gaze, trying not to seem obvious, and sees a tall dark-haired man loading a duct-taped duffle bag into a pickup truck. He ignores her.

“Jimmy, for God’s sake you have a son. Please don’t do this.” Her voice cracks halfway through, and he watches her fingers clench and unclench on the doorframe. As if on cue, a tow-headed toddler appears next to her, sucking on a few dirty fingers. He rubs one foot on top of the other, repetitous and soothing.

“Come on, talk to me. I didn’t mean it, please. Just talk to me.” She seems unashamed, or unaware, of the desperation in her voice.

The man is standing next to the driver’s door of his truck, work-roughened fingers tracing the rust patches there. He nods once, to himself, and gets in. The truck starting up almost drowns out her shout of "Asshole! Good-for-nothing bastard!", but she's crying and the words are thick and blunted through her tears.

She stands there a few moments longer, watching the cloud of blue exhaust smoke dissipate in the warm air. Her shoulders slump, and the hand not gripping the doorframe creeps up to worry at the ends of her hair. Sam’s feeling sorry for her, wondering what she did or what she was accused of doing, wondering why they’re in a motel and if they have anywhere to go. Just then, the little boy pulls his fingers out of his mouth, turns his head, and looks straight at Sam, in that way that kids do, like they can see right through a person, see all of their secrets laid out bare. His eyes are startlingly green in a pale face. Sam holds his breath.

The door slam reverberates in the quiet parking lot.

Sam becomes aware of the sodas freezing his hand off, the steady drip-drip-drip of the office air conditioner, leaving a wet patch on the concrete sidewalk. He doesn’t know how long he stands there before he forces himself to move, glancing over at the Impala before he opens the door.

Dean’s showered and lying on the bed, looking boneless. Sam can’t see his eyes, can't tell if he's breathing, and he could be dead, laid out on a white sheet, mouth slack and empty, like Dad on that hospital bed; left the room for two minutes,  _two fucking minutes_ , and no time to say goodbye.

His voice breaks, and his hands are shaking when he squeezes them into fists.

But Dean's not dead, of course he's not, because Sam would know, and so now instead he's right there, and his eyes are worried and dark and Sam does not know what to say to diffuse this. He isn't a kid anymore with scraped knees and a fat lip, and Dean can't fix this with a bandaid and a grin.

The bed is hard, and so is Dean's shoulder, and Sam tries to remember when was the last time someone touched him, really touched him, and thinks it might have been Jess.  He keeps the tears back, but only just.

~

Dinner is quiet, a little tense, and Sam can see the edges wearing thin. Halfway through the meal, Dean gets lost somewhere Sam can't follow, is not even sure if he wants to, which is why he doesn't push it when Dean lies. 

The lettuce in his salad is wilted, and Sam stabs at it listlessly with his fork, wondering if that makes him a bad brother, that he doesn't want to know. Maybe it just makes him human, like the whole rest of the world, and there's no sense of vindication that he is finally, at last, one of the regular people. He pushes his plate away and calls for the check.

Dean doesn't look up to give their waitress a parting smile or a cheesy come-on, and that unnerves Sam more than anything else.

~

On the way back home, Sam stares out the window at the fields and doesn't think much at all.

They're almost back when Dean clears his throat and asks, "Remember that time we stayed in that cabin out in Montana? I was just thinking about it."

Sam freezes, still facing away, but Dean doesn't seem to notice, and keeps talking, almost to himself.

"I can't even remember what Dad was hunting; some sort of wood spirit or something. I remember there was no running water and we got about a thousand mosquito bites and you cried like a little girl when I caught that fish and refused to throw it back."

There's a wistful kind of smile on his face, and Sam takes a moment to remember how to speak.

"Yeah, I remember. And for the record, you almost cried when you ended up having to gut that fish for dinner."

Dean snorts. "Eh, whatever. I still tried. We didn't eat it, though, did we?"

"No, no we didn't." The memory is buried deep, and Sam struggles a little. "We had fruit loops instead, I think."

Dean laughs, throws his head back and flings his arm across the back of the seat. "God, I can't believe I'd forgotten that."

Passing headlights stripe them both with gold, and Sam laughs, too, at the kids they were and the innocence they had, he laughs because he's done with crying, because there really is no point, and once you get down to it, if you can't laugh at the darkness, it'll swallow you whole. It nearly did, to both of them, and Sam shivers in the cool breeze from the window. Dean glances over, shifts his arm a little closer, and Sam can feel the heat.

Dean leaves his arm there, close but not touching, and Sam is aware of it the whole ride back.

~

He opens the windows when they get back to the room; it's stuffy from the heat and airless after the events of the afternoon. A cooling breeze ruffles the dingy curtains, and even Dean's shoulders relax.

The tv is a comfortable hum in the background, and Sam's eyelids don't want to stay open. Dean's watching him and trying not to be obvious; little sideways glances at every commercial. Night falls, the sky fading quickly to black, and the single yellow streetlight leaks past the curtain.

"Sam, go to bed. Seriously." Dean has given up on unobtrusive, and is openly staring at Sam now. His mouth says, I can't believe you're gonna punk out on me now, you baby; but his eyes are warm and fond. 

Sam grumbles a bit, for show, but gives up and crawls into the scratchy covers, flipping the pillow to the cool side. Dean turns down the volume.

Physical and emotional exhaustion blur the edges of his mind, and Sam wanders in his thoughts, passing in and out of a hundred different motels, a thousand nights spent falling asleep with the tv on and his brother in the next bed, watching without watching, and maybe that's why Dean never had nightmares, that's why all the stuff they saw, and did, later on - that's why it never got to him. He asked Dean once, when they first started looking for dad, how come he slept the sleep of the righteous when he'd been killing since he was fourteen. Dean had shrugged and took a sip of coffee, spouted some bullshit about compartmentalizing and letting it roll off your back.

But it wasn't really the whole truth. Sam can see that now.

In the next bed, Dean snorts at something funny on a late-night comedy sketch, and Sam curls his fingers contentedly in the blanket. Tomorrow he'll tell Dean, he'll tell him he can't blame himself, that it wasn't his fault. He'll make him see that they are both lost and hurting, but at least they're lost and hurting together. He'll say that he loves Dean, that he isn't going anywhere.

He won't tell Dean that he understands, now. That to Dean, family is his shield and slingshot, the weapon that gives him the strength to go against the giant of fear and loss and the horrible evil in the world, because if he's got family, if he's got Sam, then what evil thing can touch him, what evil deed can condemn him? He won't say that losing Dad left a hole in more than just Dean's heart, and that the thought of losing Sam made the darkness circle, hungry at the edge of the light. He won't say that he can read his brother better than he lets on, better than he should be able to, and that what he sees there makes him want to hold on and never let go.

He'll say, I love you, I need you, stay with me. And Dean will, because that's all he needs, to be needed. That's enough to keep the darkness at bay.

Sam falls asleep, and for the first time since Stanford, he does not dream of fire.


End file.
